Bob Geary10/08 07:31 PM
Billy—I agree with you that the objective now must be to “shape” the project to fit and enhance its context; but that job will be MUCH more difficult given that the Council has handed a rezoning entitlement to the developers to go “tall” on the full bulk of their project. (For similar scale, see 222 Glenwood.)
Can you remember a case where site-plan approval trimmed a zoning entitlement down to size based on the purported “eight standards” in the Raleigh code? I can’t. Generally, the best you can hope for is better shrubbery.
As for what happened with Coker Towers and its spawn, Coker Jr., I was involved with the first and to some degree with the second. It took an all-out, year-long campaign to stop the “Towers” (and, initially, the tallest tower was proposed to be 19 stories—hence, the name we gave to it), and the project failed mainly because then-Councilor Scruggs’ mother-in-law lived nearby and was against it.
When the same neighborhood group (NCRDR) tried to “work with” the second-round developers (Crosland now, not Coker himself) on the “Jr.“ plan, they failed completely—for two reasons: (1) Crosland wasn’t interested in a single thing they had to say, and 2) the newly elected Mayor Meeker wasn’t at all interested either, and made it clear from the get-go that the “Jr.“ project, contextual or not, was going to be approved as submitted. Which it was, by an 8-0 Council vote. It wasn’t that the neighbors didn’t try to improve on “Jr.“, in other words. It was that the new Council, under Meeker, was determined to make peace after the Coker war, and determined also not to be labeled anti-development.
The Cameron Village decision yesterday was in that go-along tradition: Meeker lead the pro-development majority, as he has throughout his tenure (remember the Soleil Center? Charles said he was against it, then voted for it); Councilors Crowder and Stephenson, the two dissenters, tried to “shape” a better project but were overruled by the mayor and his supporters.
And by the way, it’s my understanding that the final rezoning “envelope,“ though not what anyone thinks is excellent (Meeker himself, for example, pronounced it “a little too big,“ or words to that effect, even as he voted for it), is somewhat reduced from the original proposal—the result of some neighbors’ efforts, and Crowder’s and Stephenson’s, all of whom pushed hard for improvements.
Not to belabor this, but the Cameron Village case is a great example of how Raleigh’s zoning codes and planning ordinances add up to a big pile of mush. Cameron Village is governed by shopping center zoning AND by a pedestrial business overlay zoning code, the latter of which allows huge density (up to 320 units per acre) under some circumstances. The PBOD must be accompanied by a streetscape plan, and Cameron Village had one—it called for low-rise development within the 50-foot height limit contained in the shopping-center code. Are you with me? This rezoning jacks up the height limit of the streetscape plan without any requirement that the owners of Cameron Village submit a new streetscape plan for the shopping center. Is this the beginning of high-rise redevelopment of Cameron Village? Who knows. So far, it’s just a spot-rezoning of one small corner (less than 1/10 the total area of C.V.) That’s how Raleigh plans—one spot at a time. And if that sounds like it’s not planning a-h-e-a-d, it isn’t.
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